


The Best News is the Most Tragic

by Katonica



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Peter, I wrote this fueled by hate of Endgame Spoilers, Iron Dad, Iron Man - Freeform, Irondad, No Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, No Spoilers, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Tony Stark, Spider-Man - Freeform, Tony Angst, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, spider son, spiderson, you will feel pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 18:02:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18761575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katonica/pseuds/Katonica
Summary: Pepper told Tony to learn more about the current world instead of staying in his lab all day, so he decides to turn on the news.





	The Best News is the Most Tragic

**Author's Note:**

> So... Endgame came out. Which I haven't watched yet. Which means NOTHING THAT HAPPENED IN ENDGAME IS CANON THIS IS NOT >:(
> 
> I procrastinated on this so hard I started this like... three months ago.
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> :D

Tony had been drinking his coffee when Pepper switched on the television. In big bold letters displayed:

 

_**SPIDERMAN STILL FIGHTING** _

 

"If he doesn't die fighting, I'll kill him myself." Pepper tittered as she prepared herself for the meeting that was going to start soon, giving Tony a kiss before leaving out the penthouse, promising her fiancee a surprise if he attended the meeting without anyone sending her  _major_ complaints later on.

The time showed that Spider-Man had been fighting for two hours and counting, making Tony tenser as he placed down the coffee mug. Unfortunately, his distracted mind ignored the lack of counter below the cup and the ceramic creation shattered on the marble kitchen tiles. "Aw, fuck."

He looks disappointingly at the broken shards, the shattered pieces previously being a mug that read, World's Best  ~~Dad~~ Mentor, with the final word being crossed out in big bold Sharpie and replaced with Peter's blocky print, along with a little doodle of an Iron Man mask. He frowned at it, looking at the pieces. "I'll fix it later," Tony decided.

Everything was always later, he realized while he continued his work on the Bleeding Edge's nanotech, causing another frown to appear on his sweaty face. He sighed at the minimal progress he had made in the two hours he had spent in his lab.

Eventually, he wandered back to the kitchen, set on finishing at least one thing he had been neglecting.

The television had been muted as he started to repair his gift, blessing him with blissful silence. The pieces were large, making the repair much easier as he slowly pieced them together with super glue (that was a Stark prototype, of course).

Another hour passed quickly and finally, Tony finished fixing the mug. He finally looked up, and the mug shattered on the floor again.

 

 

Bright red letters flashed on the screen, declaring Spider-Man dead.

 

 

Tony stepped backward, recoiling as the camera focused on the battered and broken form of the famous, yet an unmoving form of the famous New York hero, Spider-Man, the bright red costume torn to shreds by the villains that laid around him, five unconscious and incapacitated, and one dead.

He felt his heart pound against his chest as he stumbled, his lower back hitting the counter and knocking the breath out of him. He watched with his blurry vision as the elevator doors opened and his beautiful angel of a fiancee walked- _No_ , he thought as he struggled to breathe, she ran into the penthouse, her eyes darting around his form frantically, focusing on his feet.

His eyes took a bit to focus on her panic, requiring him to squint as he took a step towards her to try to calm her down, even though he didn't know why she was worried. "Tony, stop walking." His mind stuttered as it processed her words and he slowed his walk to a stall.

"When did this happen?" Tony blinked once, then twice, and finally looked down at his feet. There was so much red. Blood covered his feet and he turned to look from where he had walked from, noting the bloody footprints that made it seem like he had come from a cheesy horror movie. He looked at the blurry mess of where the footprints started, squinting again to focus on the mess of the ceramic cup that had cut into his feet.

He looked down again, focusing closer on the blood, his breaths still fast but more controlled, and realized the red looked like a suit that had been torn to bits, specifically a suit that he had made for a teenager with curly hair and the most intelligent brown eyes...

He inhaled sharply. "Peter." Pepper jumped at the sound of his voice, to which he compared to a voice of someone who ate nothing but gravel for a week or so. 

"What?"

"Peter," he repeated, frowning as he started to walk again, the feeling of cold marble being replaced with the carpet that scratched the wounds on his feet, his mind blocking out the sounds of Pepper's protests, followed by her attempting to stop him from moving towards the lab again.

Tony knew that he had spoken, but he didn't hear a thing. Apparently, Pepper did, however, as she froze and unhappily let him continue his way to his latest suit.

She didn't make another move to stop him and he continued his walk to his only protection, the red and gold metal alloy suit that had kept him alive over and over and over, the same suit that made him feel invincible because he didn't want to feel his chest slowly squeezing his heart, his breaths becoming shorter and more laboured yet again as bit his tongue to stop himself from screaming as loud as he possibly could because by God, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe, he could do nothing against the feeling of his heart being squeezed by the agony of, he couldn't stand to hear Pepper's frantic screams in the background of his repulsors.

Was Tony... flying? He was flying somewhere, but where was he going? His eyes darted from hologram to hologram, trying to just focus on one thing because his heart beat faster and faster and faster and it wouldn't stop, and oh my God fucking damn, it hurt. All Tony could feel was the painful thrum of his heart beating.

He kept silent, the sound of repulsor jets the only thing he could hear besides the sea-  _No, not the sea,_  he thought.  _My blood, rushing in my body._

 

Did Peter have any blood in his body left? Tony tried to recall the images of the boy that had been shown on television but there had been too much red to tell the difference between the two. 

 

Slowly, very slowly, Tony could finally start to breathe. The pain in his chest still remained as he felt his heart bump against his chest at a quick pace, but he could breathe.

 

"-ark? Tony, if you don't reply in 12 seconds, I'm going to personally fly my platypus-looking ass up there to drag you back down till you can think rationally because you are not thinking rationally right now and-"

Tony spoke, and James Rhodes went silent.

The strangely calm words sent horrifying shivers down Rhodey’s spine, eyes panicked as he faced Tony’s panicked fiancee. His hands quivered at the seven-word-threat Tony gave him, slowly moving his phone away from his ear, not willing to listen to the dial tone that blared on the phone’s speaker.

“Mr. Stark, I would recommend you start breathing again.” Tony blinked back to reality, his arms held steady by the armour that encased his body. He let out the breath of CO2 he had been holding, his body’s lungs greedily gathering more oxygen provided by once again, his suit. His eyes flicked to the tiny GPS he had minimized, noting the decreasing numbers as he flew to his protegee’s location.

Ten miles flicked to four in a couple of seconds, but it was still too slow. He willed his suit to fly higher, further,  _faster._ It worked, and he arrived at the destroyed scene of New York, the wail of police cars muffled by his mind, muting everything as he tried to hear anything from the unmoving boy in front of him, lying in a pile of destroyed debris. “Pe-” He froze, the first audible words he had consciously spoken had nearly given away his mentee’s life.

"Spider-Man?” He stepped out of the suit, wearing nothing but a grey suit with a blue tie (was he wearing a goddamn- gosh darn Captain America tie?) that Pepper had forced him into while he had waited for the appointed meeting— that is, until he saw the news report.

The boy did not speak, did not move, did not _breath._ Tony nearly broke down, holding himself up with his shaky legs by the sheer wish that Peter was alive.

 

And then he was  _a_ _ware_.

 

Lights, people, flashes, destruction, and the  _red_ burst at him in an explosion, a stampede of images hurtled themselves at him without warning, making him stumble as he blinked rapidly, his familiar sunglasses missing from his face, making him conscious of his other senses.

 

The terrified shrieks, the screams of the sirens, the caterwauls of the populace, tiny sounds of a liquid dripping all around him came crashing all at once, throwing themselves at his eardrums, pounding and pulsing as his head started to spin.

 

And the  _smell,_ the scent of the streets of New York, the sweaty bodies and salty tears, the whiffs of gasoline and God… The scene in front of him reeked of iron, the tell-tale sign that there was blood.

 

Red liquid smelling of iron slowly slid off his hands, splashing onto the ground with a slight echo as he got closer and closer to the unmoving body of Spider-Man, drenched in the same liquid that was starting to coat his shoes.

 

It was blood.

 

Disgusting, maroon-coloured liquid that rushed inside and through his body and everyone else’s in the world, was splashed like a paint can had dropped from the heavens and caused terrible destruction in the middle of New York and the most devastating part, Tony realized was that this metaphorical paint can was Peter Benjamin Parker, New York’s beloved patrol-hero.

He got closer and closer to the body, approaching it like a mouse to a cat, like Peter’s body would jump out at him, screaming in pain and agony. “Spider-Man?” Tony asked, cautious and terrified, his voice a disgusting mess.

The boy didn’t respond.

Finally, Tony’s blood-covered shoes stopped, and the famous hero stood in front of the still body of Spider-Man. The crowd seemed to stop breathing, collectively holding their breaths to see what  _the_ Iron Man would do for the local vigilante, and maybe, just  _maybe,_ they all prayed.

 

Prayed for the sake of their city, prayed for their hero, for  _New York’s_ hero.

Tony’s shaking hands slowly took off his experimental glasses, stopping F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s list of injuries the boy had suffered, making their unsteady way to the limp arm of Spider-Man’s, slowly cradling the exposed wrist as he felt for a pulse.

 

He waited.

 

And waited.

 

And—

 

He froze, and an onlooker let out a wail at the stiff and shocked billionaire, who had yet to remove his fingers from the bloodied wrist.

 

“It’s there.” Tony’s soft words carried out throughout the crowd, the same words being carried like a cloud in the windy sky, fulfilling its purpose slowly.

Tony walked back, trailing bloodied shoeprints across the dirty street, moving past the dead Vulture and the rest of the Sinister Six, unconscious with, unfortunately, fewer bruises than Peter had.

He donned the suit, listening to the familiar sound of metal shut around him, the crowd still silent as he walked back to the comatose hero, picking the young man up gingerly, cradling him as gently as he could without losing more blood and nodding to a police officer who looked eerily like a certain female spider he hadn’t seen in a while, her eyes following him and flickering to the bruised body in his arms.

And then he was  _flying again,_ his path steadier than before because in his arms was a living, a  _barely breathing_ Peter Benjamin Parker. He watched F.R.I.D.A.Y. call the staffed doctors at his Medbay at the Compound, breathing out a sigh of relief as his ETA reached zero, landing in the rooftop elevator and making his way down into the health center.

 

When the doors opened, Peter was quite literally scooped out of his arms by a claw machine, bringing him to lie down on a bed that several doctors started to clamour around the bleeding boy, forcing Tony to exit his safety suit, trying to follow the bed.

“And that’s a no from us.” Tony felt four hands grab him, making him squirm to try to get out of the grips of who he looked to see that it was Rhodey, and Pepper, holding him back from following Peter’s unmoving body into the operating room.

He continued to struggle, eventually getting out of Pepper’s grip but then being held back by two more hands, who he realized was Dr. Helen Cho, the firm look on her face making Tony stop his futile wrestling. “You’re not going into a sterilized room while looking like a psychopath, Mr. Stark.”

He looked at her with confusion, recalling the new suit and cleaned shoes that he wore today. “You’re covered in blood, Tony. Your hands, your shoes, your suit…” She trailed off as he looked at his own hands, for once noticing the maroon-coloured ichor that stained his body.

“Oh no, he’s going to puke, someone get a trash can and a chair-” The world went mute again as a trash can appeared under him and he heaved into it, choking as someone pat his back softly, slowly turning the taps into rubbing circles around his back, and he fell backward from his position over the trash can into a chair someone brought over, the world still quiet and his heart still pounding against his chest, like a hammer trying to break his ribs.

“-you hear me? Tony, I need you to calm down. You’re hyperventilating in the middle of the Medbay. It’s August 9th, 2017. You’re in the Avengers Compound, with me, Pepper, your friend Rhodey, and Dr. Helen Cho. Peter’s been in the surgery room for about twenty minutes.”

Tony blinked back to life, staring at the face of a woman that he admired and loved dearly. “Peter.” Pepper sighed in relief, her hand still not leaving the side of his face as he started to relax in the chair, his hands still white as he gripped the sides.

 

* * *

 

Over two hours had passed since Peter had gone under surgery, and Tony sat in the same place he had been at since it started, in the middle of the hallway, his shaking, bloody hands being steadied by Pepper’s hand next to him.

It was something he loved about her, the way she was so willing to do things for the betterment of others than her primary concern over her own hygiene, so _willing_ to hold his hand after being covered in his protegee’s blood.

Ever so achingly slow, Tony watched the door of the dreaded room open, and a stream of doctors—all experts in their fields as he mentally listed their names and specialties—poured out from the room, white coats and blue gloves covered in the same red liquid as the one that had dried on his.

A hematologist walked up to Helen, looking at her without giving any physical indication of what had happened in the room, but the look on Helen’s face said it  _all._

“No,” Tony said as he shook his head faster and faster, his hand unlinking from Pepper and grabbing the genius doctor by her shoulders. “Tell me yes. You  _have to tell me yes._ ”

Helen looked at her employer with sad eyes, which said _e_ _verything he needed to know._

“No, Tony.”

The man stilled, his face smoothing over like a piece of film. “You don’t understand,” he said in a soft whisper, repeating his threat at Rhodey to Helen this time—only changing the tense of one word—ignoring the sound of Pepper’s heels on the tiled floor.

 

“His life was worth more than mine."

 

* * *

 

“Tony?” The man in question turned to look at Pepper with haggard eyes, exhaustion laced in the pain of sitting next to the covered sheet that hid the boy underneath it. Her eyes seemed to shake with the emotion of empathy, her hands quivering dangerously as she slowly sat down next to him, rooting her and stabilizing Tony as she placed her hands in his, spreading her warmth onto his cold hands. “Honey…”

He blinked several times as if he had just seen her for the first time. Tony stared blankly at her, shaking his head to clear his murky vision. “Pepper?” He cleared his throat, insistent on refocusing his gaze on her. “What are you doing here?”

She said nothing, only moving her gaze to the white sheet covering the still body and leaving a kiss on Tony’s forehead. He watched her silent tears, her bottom lip tremble, and the slight shake in her hands as she finally moved, reaching into her small purse for something-

 

_Oh._

 

In Pepper’s quivering hands held a familiar stick, with a bright red plus as its only decoration.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fueled by anger of people who thought it'd be funny to joke about fake Endgame spoilers. I honestly have anxiety over the most stupid things :(
> 
> Did you like this? :))


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